Terror from Tucson to Tucumcari...and counsel from St. Paul

In these times, when professional athletes like Steve Nash or renowned hips-shakers like Shakira espouse the unconstitutionality of illegal immigration legislation, Friedrich Hayek’s blesséd spirit stirs to remind us that straying from one’s specialized calling brings diminishing returns. It was not to the comparative advantage of seventies south-western folk singer Linda Ronstadt, for example, to debate Arizona’s infamous law earlier this month: “No human being is an illegal person,” she said. “They’re undocumented migrants. They’ve been forced up here from positions of incredible poverty. And these are people who’ve been able to overcome great obstacles.”

If only she had stuck to the lyrics of her trucker hit remake, “Willin,” perhaps then the obstacle-overcomers would already have replaced “¡Si se puede!” with the song’s Arizona twang:

I’ve been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I’m drunk and dirty, don’t you know…
And I smuggled some smokes and folks from Mexico…
But I’m still…willin

Then again, the obstacle-setter-uppers might find a bold rejoinder elsewhere in the song: “And I’ve been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet / Had my head stove in but I’m still on my feet / And I’m still…willin.”

Indeed, Arizonans should be so lucky to get by with a wind-kicking. While the border shooting of rancher Robert Krentz and his dog in March shocked many Americans, it fit a familiar pattern of violence. A state senator testified last week that ranchers watch hundreds of illegals cross their property daily. They travel in military-like overwatch formations, replete with a SAW gunner followed by drugs and guns at half-mile intervals. One rancher found 17 dead bodies on his property in the last two years. Investigating such deaths is dangerous: when police get killed, 80% of the time the killer is an illegal. Meanwhile, Phoenix holds a title most people would associate with Baghdad or Mogadishu: it’s the runner-up to Mexico City for the world’s most kidnappings, notwithstanding this week’s freeing of a 22 year-old mentally handicapped Phoenix woman from drug lords.

So when the White House offered its expert summary of the situation, you’ll understand if Arizonans mistook it for some sort of subtle parable: “Now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed,” it said. That’s a scenario that just might be plausible enough to worry about, if “papers” meant the ransom money in your satchel, and “harassed” meant kidnapped. But alas, this was a classic case of a central planner misunderstanding a distant problem, and attacking a solution.

Of course, an unconstitutional law is unconstitutional, regardless of its makers’ proximity to the problem. The final, amended law (a more precise version of the original controversial law) makes it a state crime to be in the US illegally. How terribly ontological: a law that makes illegality illegal. So if cops detain someone for, say, public intoxication, they can now demand a registration document if they suspect (race cannot be the sole factor) illegal residence. Critics object to the “papers please” innuendo, as well as the race factor. Yet the unenforced federal law has both provisions.

Now, I had some proximity of my own to the Mexican border earlier this year. I asked a legal Russian alien friend there what she made of the law. It’s nothing new, she says. When she gets pulled over, the cops hear her accent and immediately ask for her “papers” (she always keeps a copy on her). Actually, she says, America’s immigration laws are weak, considering the demand for entering such a great country.

It seems Mayor Chris Coleman of St. Paul, Minnesota doesn’t share this Russian’s high regard for American greatness. He issued an Arizona boycott. Meanwhile on Main Street in Nogales last weekend, a “merchant” who went nameless to avoid a violent death said the boycotters have taken their toll on his livelihood: “It’s dead. We should be closed today, but we don’t want to hurt our employees.”

If anything, it is Mayor Coleman’s boycott that’s unconstitutional. The Supremacy Clause precludes states from disrupting the enforcement of federal laws. In McCulloch v Maryland (1819), Justice John Marshall ruled, “the States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress…” Whereas the Arizona law fulfills the federal law's mission (as it also does with, say, inter-state kidnappings), Mayor Coleman’s boycott falls into Marshall’s “otherwise” category, impeding the enforcement of a Congressional law.

So as Arizonans get kicked by the winds of a drug war, rich celebrities and distant politicians stand up for cultural masochism. On a recent trip to China, state department human rights envoy Michael Posner emphasized “racial discrimination” in Arizona “early and often.” Even Roy Stryker, the New Dealer that promoted photographs of destitution in the southwest (e.g., the famous “Migrant Mother) to legitimize government intervention, felt some shame when a Nazi asked for photos which might prove America’s weakness to Hitler: “I had no intention of allowing the record of America’s internal problems to fall into his hand,” Stryker said.

Arizona has internal problems, but it also has an internal solution. The problem is an illegal population that cost the state $2.7 billion last year and is disproportionately behind the terror. The solution lies in the Arizona policemen that will put their lives at greater risk to enforce the federal law. It lies in a state citizenry that’s still proud, and indeed, still willin.

Excellent Evaluation of Recent Global Macroeconomic Policies

An excellent quote:

In his 1971 classic, Dividing the Wealth, Howard Kershner sagely observed that "Those from whom property is stolen lose the incentive to produce and, in time, there will be less and less stealable goods available."

Read this if you'd like to understand where we've been and where we're going.

I've followed John Tamny's writing for a couple of years. He has outstanding common sense and an effective means of communicating it. You can find his articles most often on RealClearMarkets. He also writes for Forbes.

Greco Vindication

Advocates for free markets and free societies have had little to celebrate lately. If one was intentionally trying to stifle growth and destroy the creative power of free people, you’d follow the Team Obama playbook. The hollow promises of new goodies and handouts, the tacit refusal to address the broken and burdensome old entitlements, and the wholesale attempt to micro-manage individual citizens’ economic well-being from cradle to the grave smacks of arrogance and neglect. What reprieve do we have?

While individuals and families day-to-day take austere measures to make ends meet, the government grows ever larger, promising more and more. The dirty secret is that everything government gives, it must forcibly take away from some one else. So as the promises of cheap healthcare and rich retirements grow, so does the consumption of everyone else’s wealth. We used to live in a nation where we would demand our productive citizens to subsidize the unproductive, regardless of whether they actually need it or are reaping the harvest of laziness and irresponsibility. Now we ask our productive citizens, their children, and grandchildren to bear the burdensome costs. What have we become?

Perhaps a more pointed is question is, “what will we become?” The answer lies across the sea. As Europe reels from suffocating budget problems, back-breaking debt, and unfunded liabilities we are offered a chance to peer into the geo-political crystal ball and gaze into the future of our very own United States. Do you like what you see in Greece? Riots, murder, unrest, vandalism, and general violence don’t appeal to me.

Rest assured, the Greek plight threatening the European Union did not come about from taxes too low, a welfare state too small, or the even the lack of audacity to hope for change you can believe in. It happened when government stopped being an entity to protect your rights and property, and became a hand to deliver, “what the people want” (or in their case what the union/government worker/welfare classes want). Humans have unlimited wants but are faced with the harsh reality of limited resources. Only governments (with their power to forcefully wrest wealth away from those who produce it) can evade this basic tautology for so long. Limited government isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. Any government that ceases to limit itself devours its only source of life: wealth-producing taxpayers.

For decades the thinkers, economists, and political leaders I look up to have been warning any one who would listen: we are on an unsustainable trajectory. The deficits and malignant growth of government we see in the U.S. does not lag far behind that of troubled Europe. We cannot sooner get out of debt by borrowing than you could stand with both feet in a bucket and lift yourself up. Just look at Greece drowning in a pool of their own decadence and profligacy, desperately clawing at their European peers, hoping to be saved.

Somehow the taunting words, “I told you so” just don’t seem to capture the moment.

As horrifying as it is to watch, we are vindicated by the malaise in Greece and Europe. If ever a “third-way” or pseudo-socialist society existed it is most of Europe. And as the European Union gasps for air, will we ignore the lesson we can learn from their suffering?

What's the deal with jihadists?

Have you heard the one about the Muslim prophet that walks into the bar? If you have, just start whistling “too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral” and sneak out the back door with your hands in your pockets. Probably wasn’t that funny anyway. Lars Vilks’ cartoon of Muhammad’s face on a dog’s body was, but he got head-butted in the face and had to scramble off stage for his life last night at a Swedish university. South Park probably had a real foot-stomper lined up last month too, but Comedy Central knew how to get out to get by.

Okay, but maybe you’ve heard the one about the jihadist that tries to do jihad because, and here’s the punch-line, he actually believes in jihad? New York Times writer Robert Wright has, and he has heard quite enough of it. The “jihadi intent” theory regarding the Pakistani jiahdist Faisal Shahzad, who tried to put jihad on Times Square earlier this month, is just too “simple,” says Wright. Jihadists like Shahzad are complex: maybe he “feels unhappy,” maybe “alienated.” “Maybe he’s having financial problems,” suggests Wright, speculating on the theoretical jihadist. And most unfunny of all, maybe the “hawkish policies” of the United States “may have helped incite Shahzad.” Killing Anwar al-Awlaki – the Mr. Fireside Chat of jihad– for example, could have a “downside” similar to that of killing Jesus, says Wright. That is, Jesus knows how many Christians just united and went forth and multiplied after that target package. Wright concludes that the downsides of anti-terrorist policies, which often outweigh the upsides, must be confronted.

While Wright presents himself as being above the narrative-proving game, he (and the many Americans that share his ideology) remains stubbornly attached to the same grievance-narrative that he espoused after the lonely Major Nidal Hassan reacted as one does to hawkish policies.

Yet it's quite the opposite: it's unreasonable to attribute rationality to terrorism. A classic example was Sergio Vieira de Mello's assasination in Iraq in 2003 by Islamists, who were mad he had helped oust Indonesia from East Timor. A "hawkish policy" in which "the downsides outweigh the upsides," Wright would ask? No -- it was an anti-genocide policy. So if we are to avoid instigating terrorists, we must promote genocide.

Wright gets the grievance feedback loop exactly backward: it’s not easy to keep up on the mortgage when you're living the dream in Pakistani jihad camps. And concerning Shahzad’s confused “social niche,” the day jihad enthusiasm in America is not inversely proportional to, say, facebook "friend requests," botched car bombings will be the least of our concerns.

Shahzad's internet connection revealed to him the injustice of US drone strikes accidentally killing Pakistani women and children, notes Wright. But wouldn't it also have led him to recurring stories of Muslim Pakistani girls covered with acid for going to school, or stoned for having relationships? Or of Muslim Somali girls genitally mutilated? Or of innocent Muslims being killed by Muslims with hawkish policies daily, all around the world? Most of the evil inflicted on innocent Muslims comes in these forms. (Shariah law, it turns out, differs from the US Army’s Counterinsurgency Manual). So why didn’t this matter? It seems Shahzad was intent on proving a narrative of his own.

Sense of proportions must not be abandoned in this fight. Wright’s comparison of Jesus to Awlaki, the very type of brute Jesus would defy for throwing the first stone at the town whore, is charming in a “gold jacket, green jacket, who gives a s***?" kind-of-way. But maybe if Wright had an example of an enemy of civilization getting killed and being awarded posthumous worshipers...like, I don't know, Imam Ali?...he might have had a stronger point.

Now, had it been a Tea-Partier in Times Square, saying he did it in the name of the Tea-Party, against the non Tea-Partiers, I would say the main cause was probably his radical belief in the Tea-Party. But then there's a, oh...three percent chance of Wright writing about whether the administration should reevaluate the downsides of its hawkish policies on capitalism. What about the downsides of writing about the downsides of hawkish policies, anyway? Terrorists read that and see less shame in terrorism.

All this reminds me of a joke – the one that Sacha Baron Cohen played on the man labeled "terrorist" in his movie “Bruno” (my first major motion picture, if you freeze the shot of Alpha Company). The “terrorist” tried to sue Baron Cohen saying he wasn't a terrorist anymore at the time of filming. The real joke was on us, Wright might argue: how simple-minded of us to accept the label “terrorist” just based on something that happened in the past. I have a feeling I’d find the “Muhammad walks into a bar” joke a bit funnier.